In a typical televised broadcast of a sporting event, video cameras are used for displaying the sporting event to viewers. These video cameras provide numerous views and perspectives of the sporting event that enhance display of the sporting event for the viewers. However, for sporting events with a ball that moves rapidly in the sporting event's playing field, such as golf, baseball, football, tennis, soccer, etc., physical constraints prevent these video cameras from accurately tracking the ball within a large field of view of the playing field for continuous near-real time display of the moving ball within the large field of view. Such physical constraints include manual tracking of the ball with the video cameras, the size of the ball, the velocity and acceleration of the ball in the playing field, the weather conditions, the placement of the video cameras, obstructions of view, etc.
Because of the physical constraints just mentioned, the video cameras used in a typical televised broadcast of a sporting event are only able to track and display the ball within a small field of view. This unfortunately provides the viewer with little insight into the overall shape and distance of the path of the ball while it moves in the playing field. In golf, such a small field of view display of a golf ball does not portray the inherent difficulty of a golf shot where, for example, the golfer needs to negotiate a water hazard or a bunker or needs to dramatically bend the golf shot. Similarly, in baseball, such a small field of view display of a baseball does not portray the distance that the baseball was hit or where it was hit.
Some attempts have been made at automatically tracking the flight of a ball in the playing field of a sporting event. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,342,051, entitled "APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR TRACKING THE FLIGHT OF A GOLF BALL", issued on Aug. 30, 1994, which is hereby incorporated by reference, describes such an approach. The system and method described in this patent uses a video camera located at the side of a golf hole. When a golfer makes a golf shot, the path of the ball is automatically tracked by the video camera. In doing so, the video camera generates successive video data frames that represent successive video images of the ball within a small field of view. A video frame processor generates from the successive video data frames successive determined position data sets that represent successive determined positions of the ball within the successive video images. From the successive determined position data sets, a flight path predictor generates successive predicted position data sets that represent successive predicted positions of the ball within the video images so as to predict the path of the ball. A tracking motion controller generates motion control signals from the successive predicted position data sets. In response to the motion control signals, the video camera moves and generates the successive video image frames so that the ball is tracked by the video camera while the ball moves. As this is occurring, the tracking motion controller generates successive motion data sets representing the successive motions of the video camera. The successive motion data sets are recorded and then post processed after the golf shot was made to generate a displayable data set representing information on the golf shot.
However, the system and method described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,342,051 is unable to provide tracking of the golf ball within an overhead large field of view of the golf hole for continuous near-real time display of the path of the golf ball within the large field of view. Specifically, because the video camera is located at the side of the golf hole, the displayable data set, when displayed, does not provide an overhead view of the shape and distance of the golf shot within the large field of view. Moreover, because the system and method use post processing, near-real time display of the path of the golf ball is also not provided.